A nod to the language of Covid-19 Dictionary enriched

Amit Roy, TT,  11.04.20, London: The coronavirus pandemic has spurred the Oxford English Dictionary into adding several new words or expressions such as Covid-19, infodemic, self-isolate, self-quarantine, shelter in place, and social isolation.

New and updated sub-entries include flatten the curve, PPE (personal protective or protection equipment), social recession, elbow bump, WFH (working or work from home).

The OED is normally updated every three months but Fiona McPherson, editorial manager, OED management, said: “This is a significant update for the OED, and something of a departure, coming as it does outside our usual quarterly publication cycle. But these are extraordinary times.”

She explained: “Any new and widespread phenomenon always brings with it the development of new language to describe it. This particular crisis has brought a mixture of new coinages and the adaptation of terms that already existed to talk about the pandemic and the impact on the world.”

She added that Covid-19 – a shortening of coronavirus disease 2019 – “is, perhaps surprisingly, the only actual neologism. The coronavirus was first described in 1968 and was first included in the OED in 2008.

“The others are a mixture of words which had wider meaning and are now being used more specifically to refer to this pandemic.”

Bernadette Paton, executive editor of OED, “which currently contains over 8 billion words of data”, commented on the social and linguistic change brought about by “the language of Covid-19”.

“As the spread of the disease has altered the lives of billions of people, it has correspondingly ushered in a new vocabulary to the general populace encompassing specialist terms from the fields of epidemiology and medicine, new acronyms, and words to express the societal imperatives of imposed isolation and distancing,” she said.

“Some of the terms with which we have become so familiar over the past few weeks through the news, social media and government briefings and edicts have been around for years. Many date from the nineteenth century.

“But they have achieved new and much wider usage to describe the situation in which we currently find ourselves.

“Self-isolation – recorded from 1834 – and self-isolating – 1841 – (which are) now used to describe self-imposed isolation to prevent catching or transmitting an infectious disease, were in the 1800s more often applied to countries which chose to detach themselves politically and economically from the rest of the world.”

She gave other examples: “Social distancing, first used in 1957, was originally an attitude rather than a physical term, referring to an aloofness or deliberate attempt to distance oneself from others socially. Now we all understand it as keeping a physical distance between ourselves and others to avoid infection.

“And an elbow bump, along with a hand slap and a high five, was in its earliest manifestation – in 1981 – a way of conveying celebratory pleasure to a teammate, rather than a means of avoiding hand-touching when greeting a friend, colleague or stranger.”